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What’s the best way to deal with uncertainty?

Well, you can do a lot worse than study successful entrepreneurs. There is nothing more uncertain that starting a new business.

When people write about entrepreneurs, they invariably focus on their behavior: what Howard Schultz or Michael Dell did in building their companies. If you take that approach, you probably would conclude that every single entrepreneur is unique, so there is little to be learned from studying them; you would have to be Howard Schultz to start Starbucks and Michael Dell to start Dell.

Enter our friend Saras D. Sarasvathy, professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Early in her work, she made a fascinating discovery, one that ran counter to the conventional wisdom. Sarasvathy studied serial entrepreneurs, people who have started two or more companies successfully.

But instead of looking at the behavior of entrepreneurs—which is indeed unique—Sarasvathy focused on how they think. There she found amazing similarities in how they reasoned, approached obstacles, and took advantage of opportunities. Yes, of course, there were variations. But the basic approach, as she understood it, was always the same.

In the face of the unknown, entrepreneurs act their way into the future. More specifically, they:

1. Take a small smart steps. What’s a smart step? It is action based on the resources you have immediately at hand. This is what lets you get started quickly. It never involves more than you can afford to lose. And it often involves bringing other people along in order to spread the risk, or obtain additional resources, ideas and credibility.

2. Having taken the step, you pause to reflect on what you have learned and to reassess reality. Things have changed as a result of taking that step. Maybe you have new resources. Or have discovered a more exciting opportunity. In any case, you build off what you have found or created. You take another smart step. Or you quit if your desire has waned (or you have discovered something else that you want more) or if you have exceeded your acceptable loss.

3. You repeat this process until you:

Succeed or

No longer want to continue. (You changed your mind; something else is more appealing.) Or

Exceed your acceptable loss. Or

Prove to yourself it can’t be done.

This is the process successful entrepreneurs use to build their companies.

If it works for them, it will work for you. Not just in starting a business, but anywhere where the future is unpredictable.